tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-187799452018-11-23T22:53:11.453-08:00EssaysKelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-68154389962570860392013-06-24T07:09:00.001-07:002013-06-24T07:09:23.546-07:00More Reading: Kelly Corrigan at TEDxSonomaCounty<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_I_M0k-jubQ" width="480"></iframe>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-55166972371865784142013-06-20T10:12:00.001-07:002013-06-20T10:16:03.370-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_M0k-jubQ">Food For Thought </a><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gwqhElAoATk/UcM4vn4LfcI/AAAAAAAAAaM/xXRCM7QSSuY/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="129" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gwqhElAoATk/UcM4vn4LfcI/AAAAAAAAAaM/xXRCM7QSSuY/s320/images.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I gave a short <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_M0k-jubQ">TEDx talk</a> last weekend about reading and what it can do for us.&nbsp; Thinking through the benefits and digging up research, not to mention wordsmithing the talk, kept me pretty busy for a few weeks there.&nbsp; I hope you find it useful.&nbsp; </div>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-43435588942725226402012-05-21T10:08:00.000-07:002012-08-28T16:27:11.910-07:00The 90s for women, according to Anna Quindlen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/dfB_yn6clZ8/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dfB_yn6clZ8&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dfB_yn6clZ8&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfB_yn6clZ8&amp;feature=relmfu" width="560"></iframe> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfB_yn6clZ8&amp;feature=relmfu"></a></div>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-40850298741917987722012-05-19T15:14:00.002-07:002012-05-19T15:14:55.908-07:00In Conversation with Anna Quindlen<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/o-YHkNu-gc4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Spent a delightful hour with a personal hero this week. Anna Quindlen and I talked through her life, and the life of the American woman, decade by decade, covering Lady Gaga, Katherine Graham, Betty Friedan, Anna's mom, my mom and a couple other truly fascinating women. Enjoy this first clip. More to come.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-54737369211158672242012-03-19T14:11:00.001-07:002012-03-19T14:11:47.436-07:00A funny moment in my recent interview with Anne Lamott<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3nVzjorJktg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-14590003565263587822012-02-14T14:23:00.001-08:002012-02-14T14:23:36.900-08:00Interesting Conversation about French Kissing and other private matters<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UtFcY0e-2IQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-39644928582644850512011-09-15T08:15:00.000-07:002011-09-15T08:27:26.707-07:00Thoughts on Happiness<iframe width="480" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e2uLP_XcJUg?fs=1" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen=""></iframe>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-67182501459257450372010-10-21T15:41:00.000-07:002010-10-21T15:43:19.117-07:00Short essay I wrote recently......about my mother, my daughter, my younger self and my current self. Bet you can relate.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_cDvCVvEs3A?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_cDvCVvEs3A?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-59722984091355082572010-08-23T17:50:00.000-07:002010-08-23T17:53:36.570-07:00Reading about MegI recently read at the Tory Burch store in SF and my pal Rick videotaped it. For all the Megs out there, big love.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/k7q9xXjhQhE?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/k7q9xXjhQhE?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-69456991356142256112010-05-02T09:46:00.000-07:002010-05-02T09:48:06.955-07:00To all the moms: here's the Mother's Day note you deserve<object width="660" height="525"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-RVq9_la1Hg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-RVq9_la1Hg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="660" height="525"></embed></object>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-11780894151608704002010-04-14T15:37:00.001-07:002010-04-14T15:45:53.797-07:00Tell me somethingCouple announcements and a request:<br /><br />1. I'll be on <span style="font-weight:bold;">The Today Show</span> on Thurs Apr 29 if you want to tune in and see if I've gained any weight or grown any new moles since last you saw me live. No idea what time my segment is. (Sorry)<br /><br />2. If you want to give <span style="font-weight:bold;">LIFT</span> to someone for Mother's Day (May 9) and you'd like a signed bookplate to stick in the jacket, I am happy to send you one. Just reply with your address and I'll pop it in the mail. <br /><br />3. I just finished a beautiful book I wanted to recommend: <span style="font-style:italic;">An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination</span> by Elizabeth McCracken. Short, intelligent, powerful.<br /><br />4. If you live in the Bay Area and are free on Thursday, May 6, I'd love to see you at <a href="http://notesandwords.org">Notes & Words</a>, a cool new event that mixes readings with live music.<br /><br />Okay, now the request:<br /><br />I am writing something about Mother's Day and was wondering what, specifically, you'd like to be thanked for. What thing or things do you do that no one seems to notice or appreciate? <br /><br />Alright, that's it for me today. Sending out good wishes to you all from my hotel in Houston.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-16192985321641735512010-03-09T09:53:00.000-08:002010-03-09T09:54:53.640-08:00I dare you.<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/c6jQ4VNEA9I&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/c6jQ4VNEA9I&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-47633568106029363622010-03-09T09:34:00.000-08:002010-03-09T09:49:50.193-08:00What are we doing to our girls?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qg3mC6S4E8o/S5aG3pY259I/AAAAAAAAAKI/mtDJ3Y5dqrc/s1600-h/latespring-1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 295px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qg3mC6S4E8o/S5aG3pY259I/AAAAAAAAAKI/mtDJ3Y5dqrc/s400/latespring-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446689089912235986" /></a><br /><br />This image stopped me short today while I was walking in Chicago. There's something so plainly starved about this girl, and then she's so young, in her underwear, almost like child pornography. Do we really want to go this far? Do I have to walk my kids past this? <br /><br />Couldn't we insist, en masse, that all models (the term itself admits to their influence) stay within a healthy weight range? Not obese and not maudlin sticks. Couldn't we all demand that stores we patronize <span style="font-weight:bold;">lead</span> rather than follow?Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-41422178874553782012010-02-26T11:43:00.001-08:002010-02-26T11:43:49.632-08:00On the road again<object width="660" height="405"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vC3UBalNkFA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vC3UBalNkFA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="660" height="405"></embed></object><br /><br />I'm headed out of town on Monday to read from the new book, Lift, which is available online now for pre-orders and next Tuesday (3/2) in stores. I'm set for a 20 stop tour (NYC, CT, Boston, NH, Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, Philly, DC, Baltimore, Annapolis, Houston, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix, to name a few). Would love to see you or your friends in the audience. <a href="http://kellycorrigan.com/tour.html">Full tour schedule here.</a><br /><br />You can also read <a href="http://blog.kellycorrigan.com/p/lift-excerpt.html">a short excerpt of Lift</a> on my site. The book is quite short, a single-sitting read, and is written as a letter to my girls about what it has been to be their mother so far and in particular, three things that happened in the early days of parenting that, to varying degrees, pre-occupy me still. The book means a lot to me; I hope you like it.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-53854265571703566752009-01-27T13:20:00.000-08:002009-01-27T13:22:16.404-08:00In Honor of John Updike's Passing<span style="font-weight:bold;">Perfection Wasted </span><br /><br />And another regrettable thing about death <br />is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, <br />which took a whole life to develop and market -- <br />the quips, the witticisms, the slant <br />adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest <br />the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched <br />in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, <br />their tears confused with their diamond earrings, <br />their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, <br />their response and your performance twinned. <br />The jokes over the phone. The memories <br />packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. <br />Who will do it again? That's it: no one; <br />imitators and descendants aren't the same. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">John Updike </span>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-10823551158794102372009-01-25T16:39:00.000-08:002009-01-25T17:05:14.265-08:00Daring Girl<span style="font-style:italic;">From the January 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine.<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span><br /><br />“This is it!” I’d call to Edward. “Get the video camera!” Georgia was a year old. “Come on, baby! Take a step.” She’d been teasing us for weeks, slowly lifting herself up and then freezing—studying the terrain, considering the consequences. “You can do it! One little baby step!” It'd be another six weeks before Georgia summoned the nerve to lift one foot off the ground and set it down in front of the other. It happened when we weren’t looking, perhaps even because we weren’t looking. <br /><br />Right around this time, I found an old Pentax in our storage space and started taking pictures. A few weeks later, I told Edward I might quit my job designing educational software. “I want to be a photographer,” I announced, handing him a set of black and whites. “Candid portraits.” He responded with his signature squint, a look of derision, skepticism, and superiority, all rolled into one. (Edward is a person who dares not begin anything that might not end with excellence, whereas I’ve been known to swing by the art supply store on the way home from the museum because “how hard can it be?”) <br /><br />I landed one photography client, then another. A nice man at the camera shop walked me through my contact sheets, showing me which frames to print. After my first big assignment, I ran back to the lab waving my check. “She couldn’t believe this was my first job!” I reported. “I can’t, either,” said the nice man, beaming. That was all the confirmation I needed to say goodbye to education software.<br /> <br />A year or two later, though, expectations had reset. Customers started asking if I did my own printing, if I would bring lighting, if I could shoot in medium format. Nope, not me. If there are ten steps to mastering photography, medium format is probably around step eight. It’s advanced. You are no longer taking long easy strides, but rather inching ahead so slowly you wonder if you’ve moved forward at all. Too much work for too little gain, if you ask me. <br /><br />By this time, Georgia was in preschool, distinguishing herself as the girl who drew flowers. Not hearts, or stick people, or big firecracker suns—just flowers. And really just one flower: a daisy-ish blossom that she honed and refined over the course of a year, like Monet and his water lilies. “Want me to show you how to draw a house?” I would ask. “I’m not finished with my flower!” she’d answer. Really? It looked good enough to me. <br /><br />If I were Georgia, I’d have moved on months ago. I like the huge payoff of the steep learning curve. One day you’re stumbling around and the next, you’re doing it (drawing a tree, skiing down the bunny slope, playing chopsticks on the piano). I like impressing people (“Wow, you’ve never done this before?!”) And I love always having a fresh answer to my favorite question, What’s new? <br /><br />Clearly, my daughter felt differently. <br /><br />Eventually, I put down my camera and picked up a pen. I had read enough poorly written newspaper columns to believe that I could beat the average. I sent in a sample essay (about teaching kids to approach new things with optimism); one month later, my name and photo were on the front page of The Piedmonter, my town’s weekly paper. Just like that, I was a “columnist,” $50 per column, two columns a month, 100,000 readers. People at cocktail parties seemed impressed. Edward stopped squinting. When I walked Georgia to school, she ran from driveway to driveway looking for my face on the morning’s paper. <br /><br />In second grade, having finally taken her flower as far as she could, Georgia dedicated herself to the cartwheel. Weeks became months. “You’ve got it!” I’d tell her. “Not yet,” she’d reply. She wanted to start and end on an imaginary balance beam, like her friend Amelia did. I’d say, “Try a headstand.” But she wasn’t looking for a quick win. She was working on something small and specific, something well beyond basic proficiency. “No,” she’d say, tossing her legs over her body again.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0370-778045.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0370-777513.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Meanwhile, after a year of writing my newspaper column, it was getting harder and harder to produce 800 original and meaningful words about family life. That’s when I came up with my coolest party trick yet. I wrote a book—a memoir about growing up called <span style="font-style:italic;">The Middle Place</span>. Each week, I’d bang out a new chapter, which I’d oblige Edward to read the minute he walked in the door on Friday nights. Eventually, my story had a beginning, middle and end. My sister-in-law found me an agent, the agent found me an editor, the book was published. And to everyone’s astonishment, for one splendid week, it was tied for 15th place on the New York Times bestseller list. The book did okay with reviewers, too. All in all, pretty good for my first time. But in every chapter, there’s a phrase or a paragraph or a whole page that I wish I’d worked harder on. <br /><br />It’s been a year since <span style="font-style:italic;">The Middle Place</span> came out, and naturally my agent wants to know how the second book is coming. “I’m thinking about it,” I say, as I flip through my rough outline for Fields and Fences (so much easier to name a book than write one). I look at the document almost every day—sometimes touching up sentences, more often just tweaking the formatting. I want to write it, I do. The subject matter—deciding what faith to teach our children—feels important and provocative and worthwhile. But when I get inside a chapter, I can’t get any momentum going. <br /><br />So, rather than suffer through the hopeless periods that every decent writer has, rather than delete and rewrite, outline and restructure, rather than advance by those tiny increments my daughter seems to relish, I’ve started something new: Saving Fairyland, an original screenplay! <br /><br />Step one: Buy special software. Check. <br />Step two: Bang out a draft. Voila! <br />Step three: Drag my friend Betsy into the project. Done. <br /><br />Right this minute, we have 89 index cards on my dining room table, one for each scene; by the time you read this, the fifth draft will be complete. That’s right, finished! If this were Fields and Fences, I’d still be suffering through the first chapter. I’ve started talking about the screenplay to friends. “You’re too much!” my friends say. “What next—an opera?” <br /><br />Of course, as I’m busy reinventing myself, Georgia is still working on her cartwheel. The same damn thing, over and over again. Except, as Edward points out, her cartwheel has actually changed—a lot. She can do it anywhere now: on a grassy hill, in a crowded living room, on a painted line on concrete. Where it was once mostly momentum, it’s now controlled and exact. And watching her one day, it dawns on me that what appeared to be fruitless repetition has turned out to be…mastery. “That’s some cartwheel honey,” I say. And I mean it.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0371-787057.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0371-786661.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />For 15 years Edward and I have been going to a San Francisco lecture series that features writers talking about their life’s work. I often think back on the night Charles Frazier said it took him six or seven years to write <span style="font-style:italic;">Cold Mountain</span>. He spent the first three in the Blue Ridge Mountains, cataloging Appalachian plants, tracking down headstones on forgotten hillsides, reading old letters and journals from 19th Century farmers. Without an agent, Frazier quit his teaching job and spent years researching a novel that, for all he knew, might never have been published. On the way home that night, Edward and I agree that Frazier's gift is not only genius but <span style="font-weight:bold;">will</span>. Writers like Charles Frazier haven’t been on the steep part of the learning curve in years. They’re not susceptible to the <span style="font-style:italic;">look at me!</span> lure of having something new to announce. They wouldn’t abandon their craft any sooner than they would their children. They’re moving slowly, even imperceptibly, toward some hard-to-come-by, maybe even impossible, goal that they refuse to forsake. How rich their satisfaction must be. <br /><br />After one thousand cartwheels, Georgia knows something of that satisfaction. And watching her, I finally see that although I’ve always prided myself on fearlessly jumping into one new project after another, I’m the one who’s been doing the same thing over and over: finding a way to be a beginner. I keep starting at zero and making it to six or seven, but never going any further, never knowing the gratification of levels eight, nine, and ten, never reaching the place where the cartwheel becomes elegant. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0351-777419.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0351-777026.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />When I think about writing another book (<span style="font-style:italic;">it couldn’t possibly go as well; I’ve told all the best stories already</span>), what worries me is that I may have already done my personal best—and that whatever worked about <span style="font-style:italic;">The Middle Place</span> was nothing more than beginner’s luck. And for the first time, I’m wondering if all the commotion that goes with continually—and “fearlessly”—reinventing myself might just be an elaborate smoke screen, a way to distract myself from my greatest fear: failure. I’d like to sit down for however many years it takes and write one true and beautiful thing, one book worthy of a world that already has too many books in it. The real truth is, I’m just not sure I can. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0353-772170.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0353-771883.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Georgia is too young to have found her life’s work, but when I watch her study the terrain and consider the consequences, it’s clear that if she felt like she had something big to say, she’d slip off quietly and while no one was looking, she’d summon the nerve to lift one foot off the ground and set it down in front of the other. <br /><br />So here I go, opening the Fields and Fences file again. One sentence at a time. If I can get myself through this, it will be the most truly daring thing I’ve ever done. And while I think and stare and occasionally type, Georgia sits at the kitchen table, directing her considerable focus on cursive. The stylish capital G. The Laverne and Shirley L. Over and over again, she writes her name, Georgia Corrigan Lichty, until it perfectly reflects the indomitable, inspiring girl she is. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0377-779770.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0377-779402.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-87276602185245352602008-11-01T09:50:00.000-07:002008-11-01T10:08:28.231-07:00Looking Back<span style="font-style:italic;">[This one was published in last month's <span style="font-weight:bold;">O Magazine</span> and is reprinted here for the Young Survivors I met last week at the Gilda's Club event.]</span><br /><br />It’s clear to you immediately that you can have anything you want when you have cancer.<br /><br />Your doctor called at 1pm and since that moment, your husband has met your every need, even anticipating needs (proving that he had been capable of such all along).<br /><br />Word spreads and your doorstep shows it -- a cheery bunch of Gerber daisies, a little tin of peanut butter cookies, a calla lily. The phone calls are endless. You think to yourself that your diagnosis is probably generating as much curiosity and awkwardness as winning the lottery would. <br /><br />Everyone treats you like you are a saint, an elderly disabled saint. <br /><br />Except two people who still want you to find their bunny -- not that one! -- and fill their sippy cups and read them a book. They never say <span style="font-style:italic;">please</span> and they always interrupt and they lean into you even when you are so hot already. And their ignorant self-centeredness is proof that you are still managing to put your children first even when you are in the crisis of your life. <br /><br />Claire comes towards you with her bulging diaper and her hair is stuck to her forehead with the musty sweat that builds up during her morning nap. She knocks over your tall pilsner glass of iced peppermint tea, the one that Edward made for you in a moment as romantic as the one in which he proposed. Claire doesn’t say she’s sorry, she just cries because her t-shirt is wet on the bottom part and she loves her <span style="font-style:italic;">Elmo and Rosita</span> t-shirt. Georgia also cries, because the tea went onto her paper where she is scribbling. She is so close to three. Her party is in five days. You’ve been talking about it for months -- when you push her in the swing, when you put her to bed, when you cut up her apple. <br /><br />“Guess what’s happening in two weeks from today?” you say.<br /><br />Then, between calls to medical centers, long sessions on breastcancer.org, and emails to work colleagues, Edward says, “We’re not gonna do the party, right? It’s too much.” But you say “No! She has to have it!” because you are feeling dramatic and magnanimous and like you can’t possibly let cancer have it’s way with your daughter’s first real birthday party. He says, “She’ll never even remember it.”<br /><br />“I will,” you say.<br /><br />On Wednesday, you swing into the Mammography center to pick up your films to take them over to the national expert you will wait three hours to see, making lists and pretending to sleep and reading old <span style="font-style:italic;">People</span> magazines about Jen and Brad and that Angelina Jolie. On the way home, even though you’ve just been told you will do chemo for 5 months and then probably have a mastectomy after that, even though it’s dinnertime, you pass Michael’s craft store and you tell Edward to pull in -- “real quick” -- so you can get some decorations and order the helium balloons and he looks at you like you’ve just cut your own hair with a kitchen knife.<br /><br />But then you’re in there, at Michael's, and it’s so exciting to be in line with the other people whose great concerns are finding three matching green photo mats and some extra wide gross grain ribbon for their fall door wreath. You’re up and the tired cashier says, “How are you tonight?” and you say, “Good!” and it’s the biggest lie you ever told as well as the God’s honest truth and you don’t really know what you’re doing but someone’s gonna have a great birthday on Saturday and it’ll all be because of you and you aren’t irrelevant yet, even if you are defective and are messing everything up for your family.<br /><br />You are perky coming out of the store, even holding the door for the woman behind you, who is having a bad day, you can tell. Edward is slumped over the steering wheel like he’s been shot from behind, which he kinda has. He sits up when he feels you coming towards the car. He is “fine, just tired.”<br /><br />Your kids are asleep when you get home and Sophie, the babysitter who breaks out every time she has a pop quiz, looks at you tragically but you divert her by saying, “Look! Look at these great party hats -- they go with the plates -- see?” You sound like Mrs. Dalloway. Edward hands Sophie a wad of twenties and says, “Thanks Soph.” <br /><br />You unpack your shopping bag from Michael’s and show Edward the candy decorations for the cake you haven’t made but will and he says “Good” and you can’t bear to ask him how he is again because it might come out this time for real and so you just turn on the stereo and as he heads to the answering machine, you say, “Let’s do that tomorrow” because the machine says 14 people called and every one of them wants to tell you that <span style="font-style:italic;">you are in their prayers</span> and that <span style="font-style:italic;">God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger</span> but Edward is responsible and level-headed and says, “It could be about your bone scan.” You realize you forgot something in the car, maybe, so you say “OK, I gotta go get something in the trunk anyway” and when you come back he says, “The scan is on Friday. I’ll call Sophie.”<br /><br />The party is scheduled for Saturday afternoon and when you send out the email about it -- yes, it’s happening, please no cancer talk -- you realize you will have to have a conversation with your children before all these people come over. You google <span style="font-style:italic;">talking to children about cancer</span> and you start to worry that some kid will say “My grandma died of cancer” and then you realize your daughters don’t know what death is. Because why should they? <br /><br />Then you find this line: “Cancer is like weeds in a garden.” That’s really good. You think you should send a thank you card to the person who came up with that phrase. <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">See how important words are</span></span>, you think.<br /><br />The bone scan makes you cry. “Stay still please,” says the technician, who has an Irish accent and looks like a guy who loves his pub. It’s so big, the machine, it’s so Willy Wonka/Mike TV and you can tell it is extremely expensive and you know very little but still enough to know that if they find it in your bones, you’ll probably die before you turn 40. And that’s why you cry and that’s why the technician asks you again to “stay very still” but when he comes to your side to help you up off the table, he has tears in his eyes and you know that he does this every day so why would he cry?<br /><br />Friday is a two-Ambien night. Sleep is deep and black and divine.<br /><br />Saturday! The party. Georgia is at your feet in no time. “Mommy! I’m three! I’m three years old!” <br /><br />“You are, do you feel any different?”<br /><br />“No.” <br /><br />“Are you sure?”<br /><br />“No, I don’t feel anything. Everything feels exactly the same.” She looks concerned, like maybe if she can’t feel it, it didn’t happen.<br /><br />“Well, even if you can’t feel it, it’s real,” you say, newly expert in the matter. <br /><br />Edward comes in and lifts Georgia up and she is so happy and the party will be great. <br /><br />Everyone will come with a bigger gift that they had planned -- at the last minute they will tape something extra on the top; a recorder, a pony tail holder, a <span style="font-style:italic;">My Pretty Pony</span>. Claire will also get a pile of gifts. In an hour, Georgia will blow out her candles and there will be wrapping paper everywhere and the goodie bags that compliment the paper plates will be torn through and it’ll all be on film and towards the end, after about half the people have left and the afternoon is drifting towards five o clock, you will open a bottle of chardonnay and the remaining mothers will gather around and fill little polka dot paper cups and you will all stand in the sun and look at each other and your children and shake your heads and make that little sound you do when you don’t know what else to say, the little sound that says <span style="font-style:italic;">didn’t see this coming</span> and you will lean into one of them and feel that tiny contraction in your throat that means you’re going to cry and you will decide to let it come, it’s really okay now, because Georgia is running in circles on the back deck with her new butterfly wings on and a hot pink helium balloon tied to each wrist and needs absolutely not one more thing from you.<br /> <br />For now.<br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0007-745087.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0007-744743.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-13391942543444146172008-09-22T10:33:00.001-07:002008-10-19T12:29:52.658-07:00Things Women DoA couple weeks ago, I was the "Guest of Honor" at one of the country's largest breast cancer walks. It was goofy, like Mardi Gras, but sober, like a church square dance. People wore boas and cowboy hats and put their Boston Terriers in pink TuTus. Women like this one:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0142-717023.JPG"><img style="float:center; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0142-716642.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />And these two:<br /><br /><br /><br />And these W.I.T.'s (Women In Training):<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0043-758547.JPG"><img style="float:center; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0043-757898.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />When they release doves into the air to start the walk, I stood next to "the Pats" -- two old friends who started this particular race. 15 years ago, over coffee, Pat 1 and Pat 2 decided Little Rock needed to participate in the Komen movement and that they might as well be the ones to do it.<br /><br />This year, 46,000 women walked.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0109-723438.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0109-723054.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I left proud to be a woman and wondering if there will every be anything that I start that is as utterly good as what The Pats have done down in Arkansas.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-81158896770298361562008-08-11T10:11:00.000-07:002008-08-11T10:51:06.549-07:00Field TripI made a list this morning of places I might take my kids today if I was a better mom -- the Exploratorium, Zeum, Fairyland. But then, I drifted into my office (there's a bad undertow near that door) and started pushing through a hundred emails that need attention. The next thing I knew, thanks to one of those email blasts certain friends send every so often, I was on <a href="http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day">National Geographic's</a> site and calling out "Girls! Come here! Look!"<br /><br />Here's one of the shots that blew us away. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/frog-742876.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/frog-742870.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />"What are those?" Claire asked.<br /><br />"Eggs," I said, almost in a whisper.<br /><br />"Will they all become babies?" Georgia asked.<br /><br />Before a discussion could develop, Claire said "Click the octopus!" 15 minutes later, we were still clicking. A sea anemone. A peacock. A thorny devil lizard in Australia. <br /><br />Then we got to this one. Which was sort of how I was feeling after walking through all those images with my kids leaning into my shoulders, like it's big world and I'd like to carry them through it for a while and co-exist in that place of wonder where there is no age and nothing has been disturbed and language is not only insufficient but also unnecessary.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/woods-799102.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/woods-799092.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />And for the rest of the day, and maybe the rest of my life, I will be wondering if all that beauty is God or nature, and if it really matters anyway.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-34755537520503879842008-05-12T13:17:00.000-07:002008-05-23T21:34:39.452-07:00Doubt Inside My Doubt<span style="font-weight:bold;">This essay is reprinted here from O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, where it appeared in May 2008.<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span><br /><br />My mother is fond of telling me I’m over-thinking it, “it” being anything from organic mulch for my flowerbeds to booster seats for my daughters so you can imagine how she feels about my religious ambivalence. While it’s not quite true to say she was 30 with three kids before she met someone who wasn’t Catholic, it’s close enough. Perhaps as a consequence, she is not a woman who has frittered away her days critiquing her religion. Instead, she prays, mostly for her children, who she so hoped would inherit her bulletproof faith but who are more likely to drive away with her navy blue Buick and a leftover case of Chardonnay she bought at a discount over the state line in Delaware. Both my parents shudder over our discerning, noncommittal generation that has something to say about everything but nowhere to go on Sunday mornings. <br /><br />I envy my parents’ orientation. Supplication, I’ve often thought, must be easier on the body than TUMS and Ambien. How contenting it must be to believe that someday everyone you love will be in one place and will stay there forever. Who wouldn’t want that? But for all of its obvious appeal, I rarely go to church and have only read a few chapters of the Bible. (I got stuck five chapters into Genesis when Adam was said to have lived for five hundred and thirty years.) But even as roll my eyes, I’m not ready to toss out both bath water and baby. There is doubt in my doubt. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/kelly-and-girls-708569.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/kelly-and-girls-708128.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>And from my earliest days as a mother, I have known that someday, say when the girls start elementary school, I’d be expected to take questions from the audience, so to speak. <br /><br />Then, in the fall of 2004, well before either of my daughters asked me about God, both my father and I were diagnosed with late-stage cancer. I was 36, and the seven-centimeter tumor behind my nipple was technically my second cancer. (In my mid-twenties, I’d had a melanoma as big as a pencil eraser removed from my calf, leaving a little divot and a long scar that remind me to use sun block and stay in the shade at midday.) My dad was 74, and the scattered tumors around his bladder marked round three for him. And as alarming and unsettling as this was, I did not fall to my knees and petition the God of my childhood. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/kdc-xmas-77-766647.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/kdc-xmas-77-766602.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The day my doctor called with the diagnosis, I hung up the phone, looked over the heads of my kids and mouthed to my husband, “It’s cancer.” Then, after a long hug, a cold Corona, and a cigarette (I had squirreled away a half-smoked pack after a party the year before and for reasons I can’t explain, I couldn’t wait to suck up a Merit Ultra Light that afternoon), we went to the computer and starting searching for information on “invasive ductal carcinoma.” My father got his diagnosis in person; after thanking the doctor and scheduling a slew of tests, he and my mother slid into the Buick and drove down to St. Coleman’s, their favorite little church, for noon mass. They gave it to God; we gave it to Google. <br /><br />Over the course of a year, my dad and I both got better and, especially in his case, people said it was miraculous. At the very least, it was unexpected. Perhaps even unexplainable, though not to Mom, who summed it up in a word: prayer. “People around the world were praying for your father,” she explained (“around the world” referring primarily to a high school friend of mine who lived in Moscow and had always been particularly fond of my dad).)<br /> <br />I had both always prayed and never prayed, which is to say that I often found myself in bed at the end of a day saying to no one in particular, “Thank you for this good man beside me and those girls in the other room.” But had I beseeched God to make me well? Had I begged God for my father’s life? I had not. Among other things, I didn’t want to be—to borrow from sixth-grade parlance—a <span style="font-style:italic;">user</span>, a phony who thought she could get what she wanted by conveniently nuzzling up to someone she usually snubbed. <br /><br />After my dad recovered, I talked to an old friend about my parents’ confidence in prayer and their belief that God had intervened. Rather than praise the inexplicable glory of God, my friend thought we should acknowledge and exalt the devotion and ingenuity of man. Or, as she put it: It just bugs me how people want to give all the credit away, as if we were all just useless sinners who didn’t know how to take care of ourselves or each other. In other words, maybe it wasn’t prayer that made my dad better—maybe it was the scope with tiny scissors that removed nine moldy tumors from my dad’s bladder without his even having to check in to the OR. Or all that chemo. Or the meticulous doctor who managed his case with such vigil. I liked my friend’s take on things: <span style="font-style:italic;">up with people and their hard work and cool inventions</span>. <br /><br />But I kept going thinking back to my father’s initial prognosis. The urologist to whom I attributed my dad’s stunning recovery had told us to "brace for the worst." Ten months later, when he declared my father a healthy man, that same doctor said he couldn’t explain “how on earth” my dad was disease-free. So could I really give all the credit to a doctor who shrugged his shoulders and said it was "anybody’s guess" how my dad survived? <br /><br />Part of growing up is living with the disturbing and complicating fact that people—even the very smartest people—are sometimes wrong. It was only a generation ago when new mothers smoked cigarettes on the maternity ward while nurses fed the infants nice big bottles of formula, to say nothing of wee Pluto, once required learning for all students of a certain age. Every day, things get grayer and grayer where they used to be neatly partitioned into black and white. Notions that are considered dubious now will, in a just decade or two, become widely accepted. Or vice versa: what is standard practice now will be eschewed, like how no one puts plastic in the microwave anymore. So might we eventually say, “Can you believe that people used to doubt the power of prayer?” <br /><br />In fact, the federal government has underwritten elaborate and expensive studies asking this very question. Online, I read through a pile of 2002 research that showed a measurable, therapeutic benefit to prayer. People who prayed and were prayed for had higher recovery rates. Sure, the link can be explained away: prayer, like any type of quiet meditation, is relaxing, and relaxation has proven physiological benefits. But a click away from those reports is collated surveys of surgeons and oncologists—a huge majority of whom pray for their patients. Scientists praying. So it’s not just my unguarded, gullible parents. If doctors can get to belief, might I? <br /><br />If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us—and all of our lives—to be meaningful. But small. I’d be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts. I’d love to laugh at this life from a distance. As it is, I relish the fact that I am one of six billion people the way my mother revels in Pavarotti’s recording of the Ave Maria. Being one in six billion means my life can’t possibly matter to anyone but me and my little flock and that means almost everything on my mind, all my mistakes and failures and anxieties, is utterly inconsequential. When I forget my place, things begin to matter too much and I find it hard to get a good, deep breath. When that happens, I close my eyes and imagine flying over houses, lifting off the roofs and seeing all the people whose lives are happening concurrently with mine—arguing, dying, cooking, begging, hugging, losing, building, stealing, suffering and laughing, people learning that their adult son shows signs of schizophrenia or their mother is bankrupt, brothers playing air hockey in the basement after a fight, couples listening to music on the sofa, holding each others feet. Each of us a little bitty fish in an inconceivably large pond, swimming in circles, nothing to do but enjoy the water. <br /><br />But maybe that’s a foolishly incomplete picture. Maybe there’s something between and around and inside of all six billion of us and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn’t that be outrageous? And beautiful? <br /><br /><br />Enter faith, the tallest order, the tightest nut, the humbling of yourself before purposes you don’t—and cannot ever—comprehend. Let’s face it; believing that there is a God who might get involved in your life—your tiny little life—defies all reason. In fact, it’s beyond anti-intellectual. It’s downright foolish. But then there’s the confounding, cuts-both-ways quote from Voltaire, the great French thinker who criticized the church while still seeing evidence for a supreme, eternal being everywhere he looked: who said, <span style="font-weight:bold;">“Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd.”</span><br /><br />So, I let my parents share their faith with our children. When we visit Philadelphia where my parents live, I let them take our daughters to church. At night, my mom gets the girls on their knees and shows them how to cross themselves and position their hands and bow their heads. It is a lovely sight, and I would never discourage it. But when we get back to California where we live, the girls are loaded with new ideas and the kinds of questions I always knew were coming.<br /><br />Claire, who is a senior in preschool recently asked what lights are made of. After I gave her my best answer, something sketchy about filaments and electricity and Thomas Edison, she said, “In church, they said Jesus is a light.” Georgia, a first-grader, reprimanded me for saying ‘Oh my God.’ “God is a bad word,” she said. To which I heard myself say, “Oh no, honey. God is not a bad word. God is a very good word.” Both girls have asked if they could be the Holy Ghost for Halloween. <br /><br />Regardless of where I am on the spectrum from atheism to theism, I’d rather my girls be grounded in something, even something that seems too good (or too damn crazy) to be true. So when the girls ask me about God, I say that people believe all kinds of things and no one really knows, including me, but that I hope for God. Then I tell them what my husband recently told me with tears in his eyes. I say <span style="font-weight:bold;">being with them is the most spiritual experience of my life—the highest high, the deepest yes, the most staggering gift—</span>and that gift must have come from somewhere. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0062-767308.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/DSC_0062-766900.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />And what to say about all the little gifts, the everyday stuff like a good cantaloupe or the rebate check coming just in time or a great public school teacher? For that, I’ve taken to saying grace with the girls. We all hold hands while I talk about our friends, our family, our health. Then my husband, generally prompted by my raised eyebrow, says a prayer for the people we know who are having trouble. The girls mostly tolerate it (sometimes adding a thank you for a popsicle or a playdate) and look forward to saying Amen, after which we do the family wave, as if the home team just scored. It feels good, saying grace. Not only because gratitude is a pleasant emotion but also because it is a step in the direction of my childhood, where grace was offered regularly (if quickly) and faith was less ambiguous. <br /><br />For now, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m just another person pulsing with thankfulness, wondering what will happen next. Someday—despite all medications and all prayers—people in our lives will get sick and will not get better. They will die. Georgia and Claire will ask me where they went and I’ll probably be wondering the same thing. Have they gone to a paradise, a separate plane of existence where God holds them in palm of his hand? Are they internalized in the people who are left behind? Do they become part of the earth and therefore, an endless part of the cycle of life? <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/greenie-sky-751492.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/greenie-sky-751061.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>If you asked my dad, he’d assure you that heaven exists and boy are you gonna love it. Just like if you asked him why I got better, he’d say something about how God wants me to be here. I tell him I got better because there was an antidote, namely four chemotherapies, each an impressive creation of man. But that just makes him laugh, shake his head and flash his big knowing smile. “Aw Lovey,” he says, “don’t you see? What do you think makes a man spend his days trying to cure cancer?”Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-23803629516560435662008-04-29T08:29:00.000-07:002008-04-29T08:31:02.342-07:00Virtual RealityIf you can't get to a reading, you might enjoy this video taken at a recent Berkeley event by my old pal, Ricky Friedman. If it seems like I keep looking at someone, my husband, Edward, was in the front row. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FRQpmSVV9SA"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FRQpmSVV9SA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-55832291259025601172008-04-11T20:42:00.001-07:002008-04-11T21:23:07.484-07:00About Faith<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/O-Mag-May-795841.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/O-Mag-May-795553.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>I worked long and hard with a very smart editor at O Magazine named Deborah Way to figure out just how to articulate where I am with faith these days. The back and forth, draft after draft, was the closest thing to therapy that I've had in years. Although there is much left to resolve, I was able to come up with a couple thousand words about it and you can read them in the May issue, which has just hit the newsstands. Since this was written, I've dug into the Bible (a children's version, in particular), some C.S. Lewis, a refresher course on Greek and Roman mythology and a collection of poetry called In Praise of Mortality, by Rilke. Oh, and the 2004 novel, Gilead. Hard to say yet where it's all leading but it definitely feels worthwhile.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/o-mag-2-742710.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/o-mag-2-742629.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>The photo that runs with the essay was taken in New York, in January, the same week The Middle Place came out. My dad was with me as the original idea for the photo was to get him walking into the Cathedral and me hesitating out front. [St. Patrick's Cathedral has a noon mass that my dad used to frequent before he retired and stopped commuting to New York.] But in the end, the shot they went to print with was one of the very last they took, while my dad was around the corner getting us coffees. <span style="font-style:italic;">Greenie, you were robbed. </span> <br /><br />I am very interested to hear from you about your faith (in God, yoga, nature, retail therapy, service--whatever you believe in) so if you have thoughts after you read the essay, please post them.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-43800181850090735062008-04-01T11:22:00.000-07:002008-04-01T11:26:45.480-07:00So Close Eddy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/one-730024.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/one-729654.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/three-798855.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/three-798355.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/four-751291.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/four-750791.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-13815372707603983002008-03-27T12:45:00.000-07:002008-03-27T13:00:39.371-07:00The Midnight CoughYou hear it. First, from a distance. Then it breaks through. You are dumped out of the island hammock that is REM sleep. You do not open your eyes but you roll them. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough.</span> You pull the pillow over your head. You count. Five, six, seven— <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough. </span> She had it last night too. It never stopped. Not until she stood up. It’s postnasal drip, you can tell. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough.</span> Nine seconds that time. Maybe it’s slowing. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough.</span> You should get up. You might as well. It’s not going to stop. Would your husband get up if he were here? Not in a— <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough</span>. Will she wake up her sister? Why do they sleep in the same room? It was your husband’s idea. You could shoot him. If she wakes her up— <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough.</span> Get up. You gotta get up. Where are you slippers? It’s so cold. What time is it? <span style="font-style:italic;">Don’t look</span>, you shout to yourself without speaking. <span style="font-style:italic;">Don’t ever look at the clock in the night. </span> That insomnia article said— <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough</span>. Get up. Get up right now. Put an end to it. <br /><br />You are up. A little lightheaded. You move towards the hall. Were you always this stiff? Is this why they say parenthood is for the young? <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough</span>. There is no cup in the bathroom. How could there be no cup in the bathroom? The cleaners. Why do the cleaners always take the cup—it’s like they hide it, along with your face lotion and your kitchen sponge— <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough</span>. You are down the stairs, in the cabinet, at the fridge. You press the cup against the door. <span style="font-style:italic;">The light—don’t look at the light. You’ll never get back to sleep if you look</span>— <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough</span>. You are upstairs again. In the bathroom again. You have to turn on the light over the sink. You keep it low. Where is the Tylenol Cough? What’s this…Robitussin…from 2004. Is that expired? I’ve gotta throw some of this shit out. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough.</span> Why do we have so much Motrin? Oh yeah, Costco. God, I haven’t been to Costco in years. Well, here’s some Tylenol Flu. Bad idea? <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough. </span> It’s all you’ve got. The little measuring cup—where is the little cup? Goddammit. How many little cups have we gone through? <span style="font-style:italic;">Don’t get mad,</span> you say gently to yourself, <span style="font-style:italic;">it’ll wake you up.</span> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cough, cough.</span> You take the open bottle to your kid, oh and here’s a lozzie. That’ll help. You're at her bedside now. She’s hot and red. “Claire, honey, take a sip…” <br /> <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">CRY</span> (as if dropped-the-ice-cream) “Okay, have a little water. Sit up. Two hands, there you go. Now,” you say as you bring the Tylenol Fl to her lips, “just a sip of—“ <span style="font-weight:bold;">CRY</span> (as if car-running-over-toes) “Claire, honey, you have to just take a quick sip so you can sleep—“ <span style="font-weight:bold;">CRY</span> (as if lion-charging–her-full-on) “Okay, forget it.” You put down the Tylenol Flu dramatically. “Have this lozzie.” <span style="font-weight:bold;">Whimper</span>. “It’s the lozzie or the medicine,” you say to her in the dark. “It’s too spicy,” she half-whispers. You tell her this is the minty kind. She succumbs. “Okay good. Okay lie down now.” <span style="font-weight:bold;">Stroke, kiss.</span> <br /> <br />You walk quietly back to your room and slip back into your bed. Still warm. You are so happy to be there. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Silence</span>. You imagine her sucking her lozzie on her side and then her back. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Silence</span>. Is she okay? Is she choking on her lozzie? You want to check. The coughing wasn’t that bad. You should get up. You are crazy. She is five. She knows how to suck a lozzie. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Silence</span>. She could swallow it whole. She could die. Tonight. Just so you could sleep. <span style="font-weight:bold;">More silence.</span> Did you put the cap back on the Tylenol Flu? What if she drinks it? All of it. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Silence</span>. You know what’s coming. You looked into the light. You know what time it is.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18779945.post-84327468063648247582008-03-17T13:06:00.000-07:002008-03-17T14:05:48.962-07:00Essay from April Issue of Glamour<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/missy-and-me-724103.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://kellycorrigan.com/blog/uploaded_images/missy-and-me-723633.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Glamour's April issue has a great collection of essays on friendship by writers like Jennifer Weiner, Julie Klam and, um, me. I have always felt slightly unworthy of my friendships, like I couldn't possibly have done enough to deserve them. So I was glad to have the chance to spill some ink on a few pals. I hope it gives a little honor to the many women who accompanied me through cancer, including Missy (in the photo at right). Whatever your crisis is--infertility, unemployment, divorce--I'm sure you can agree that when it's over, you're left with a tremendous sense of awe and gratitude for the people who showed up. Here's to you guys, a model for us all.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2008/03/7_friends">APRIL GLAMOUR: 7 Friends Every Woman Needs </a> <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The friends who show up</span><br /><br />You never know until you know, you know? You hope your friends are what you think they are—loyal, deep, fast—but you don’t find out for sure until, say, a big lump in your breast turns out to be a bad tumor. Shannon called from vacation in tears when she heard my news. Mellie hired me a house cleaner. Carolann knitted me a warm, kicky beret that I wore for months until it began to fall apart and my husband said I looked like a 40-year-old pothead. One by one, in choreographed succession, Phoebe, Tracy and Missy packed bags and came from points east to California, because they “had to be with me.” They didn’t know what they were doing—my cancer was a first for all of us—but they came anyway. They brought things— art supplies for my two kids, books for my husband, slippers and sleeping caps for me.<br /><br />And all this came as quite a surprise to me. Had I earned this much support?<br /><br />I had lived most of my life in the company of men. When I was growing up, my older brothers dominated our house, as much with their giant bags of sweaty ice hockey equipment that filled the laundry room as with their epic tales of triumph at the boy-girl dance. I lived in the space that was left over, sometimes boldly (if ineffectively) inserting myself into the action, but mostly saving my voice for a later day. I’ve often pretended that I preferred hanging out with men. After all, I had learned how to cuss like a sea hand and tell a joke like a bartender and, damn it, I wasn’t going to rein myself in for a bunch of lily-livered “ladies” who bored me with their small talk about wrap dresses and Pilates and sisal rugs.<br /><br />But it was the ladies who saved me, physically and emotionally. My surgeon was a woman, as were my ob-gyn, my chemo nurse, my radiation oncologist, my genetic counselor and the psychologist who gave us the words “cancer is like weeds in a garden,” a phrase my husband and I used over and over again with our small children (who are, incidentally, both girls). When my fertility was sacrificed to the cause, I found the empathy I so needed in the arms of Mary Hope and then Meg and then my mother, all of whom knew to listen for a long time (days) before reminding me that the two girls I already had were double-good, and would surely fill me up if I let them. Maybe it was the central role my breasts were suddenly playing in things, but looking back, it was a distinctly feminine time and one that left me wiser than it found me.<br /><br />Since then, since I’ve become a regular person again instead of a cancer patient, I’ve kept a soft spot in my heart for guy friends, but I woo girlfriends. I cultivate and collect them because I know. Believe me, I know.<br /><br />—Kelly Corrigan, author of the New York Times best-seller <span style="font-style:italic;">The Middle Place</span>.Kelly Corriganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14617986491532714520noreply@blogger.com